A post on Reddit's gameswap forum outlines the plight of someone whose Steam account has been permanently disabled, preventing his access to 149 games that SteamCalculator says were worth a total of $1794.52. This stems from a previous attempt to sell this account, which is a violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement, as it states: "You are entitled to use the Software for your own use, but you are not entitled to: (i) sell, grant a security interest in or transfer reproductions of the Software to other parties in any way, nor to rent, lease or license the Software to others without the prior written consent of Valve." The user asked Steam support if he's been permanently disabled, and was told: "Correct, you lose access to your account permanently for violating our Subscriber Agreement." We contacted Valve for comment on this a couple of hours ago, but they have not responded. Thanks Joao via Ars Technica. Update: A post on the Steam Users' Forums from Valve says: "The article doesn't mention that the account has been re-enabled."

Remember when you were able to sell your games to other people when you were finished with them. Just sell them the disk, the manual and the box. Nothing illegal about it - just like selling a used car.